Oaxaca Art Journal Workshop: Capturing Your Experience

Oaxaca Art Journal Workshop: During Semana Santa–Holy Week, Thursday, March 29 – Thursday April 5, 2012 — 7 nights, 8 days

The art or visual journal is a creative way to bring impressions, ideas, emotional reactions, and imagery to paper. It is a portable, spontaneous and compact approach to artistic expression. This is a great resource for artists to develop future work. For the novice, this is a tool to develop creativity and make connections between images and language. Your art journal sketchbook will reflect your own personal cultural immersion experience.

You don’t have to be an artist to attend! This program is for anyone who wants inspiration from the visual images, colors, textures, patterns, food, music and art that Oaxaca is famous for.

During the week, we will review the work of renown Oaxaca artists Rodolfo Morales, Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo. We will meet textile and pottery artists, artisans and designers.  We will be in Oaxaca just before Easter during Semana Santa – Holy Week – an impressive religious observance that is both serious and full of carnivale atmosphere.

Along the way, you will collect whatever captivates you – perhaps a bit of cloth or yarn, a postcard or handbill, a photo or restaurant menu. Maybe you see the design of a 16^th century colonial façade or the embroidered bodice of an elaborate dress or the face of a child holding a bouquet of balloons that leaves a lasting impression. You may write about that impression as a quick note or poem, or add an image in your journal to record the memory.

Along with our travel days to markets, museums, and galleries, we will spend time in our village workshop/studio space to apply what we have collected employing mixed media compositional techniques, and design and color. We will use prompts and other tools to help you develop your own creative approach. To find out more about this opportunity see this website link.